Virus

How good is Virus on a scale of 1-10?

  • 7

    Votes: 6 7.4%
  • 6

    Votes: 9 11.1%
  • 1

    Votes: 4 4.9%
  • 2

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • 3

    Votes: 3 3.7%
  • 5

    Votes: 4 4.9%
  • 4

    Votes: 2 2.5%
  • 8

    Votes: 17 21.0%
  • 9

    Votes: 17 21.0%
  • 10

    Votes: 18 22.2%

  • Total voters
    81
It's not perfect, the beginning isn't all that great, and the ending is cool but not too memorable. What's in between, though, is one of Maiden's all time greats. Far to short, but what is there gets a 10/10.

EDIT: Or at least it would, if there was a 'change vote' option...
 
Another slow intro after an album chock full of them. Blaze sounds a little better on the soft stuff than on most of the equivalent material on The X Factor, but he's still inconsistent and a bit off key. The back and forth between the softer and harder sections is kind of interesting, but goes on a bit too long.

After 2 minutes of this we do a hard left turn into what feels like a completely different song with a pretty good Maiden vibe. Blaze's delivery is sloppy, but mostly works until the chorus, where his attempts to harmonize with himself completely fall down. When you can't hit and hold your notes, and when your vibrato and tremolo are inconsistent, singing on top of yourself sounds terrible -- a chorus of bleating goats is what comes to mind for me in this case.

Blaze tries to hold the note at the end of the chorus, but fails miserably, wavering off-key until he contorts it into an awkward "yeah". The musical interlude that follows is fine, but nothing special. The choral accompaniment is nice, though.

"The rats in the cellar, you know who you are" is delivered poorly, almost like he's doing an ironic punk take on it...but he's not. His self-harmonization on "or do you" actually sounds pretty good, though.

The song should have ended there, but we get another unnecessary callback to the intro, because that was apparently Steve's thing during this time period.

Another mixed bag from Blaze-era Maiden. Some strong positives and some equally strong negatives. 5/10.
 
It's not perfect, the beginning isn't all that great, and the ending is cool but not too memorable. What's in between, though, is one of Maiden's all time greats. Far to short, but what is there gets a 10/10.
This makes absolutely no sense. If it has recognizable problems and an entire section that "isn't all that great", how could you possibly give it a 10/10?
 
The song should have ended there, but we get another unnecessary callback to the intro, because that was apparently Steve's thing during this time period.
Interestingly, the outro works a little better on the radio edit because it's the first time you hear it in that version, which eliminated the entire opening 2 minutes of the song.
 
I think the callback to the intro works perfectly in this song. There's so much tension to it, and it feels so chilling and menacing after the faster parts. The intro itself works perfectly as well, and I completely dislike the radio edit because, musically, it makes no sense. It starts too suddenly, you can easily tell something is missing, and without the intro, the reprise at the end is meaningless and completely random.
 
This makes absolutely no sense. If it has recognizable problems and an entire section that "isn't all that great", how could you possibly give it a 10/10?
This is from a while back. My current thought is that every single bit is perfect and it definitely deserves a 10/10.
 
I just a quick look at all of the alternate universes out there; & nope, nobody cried when Blaze left. I might have missed one I suppose.
 
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